OFFS's! Can they not understand that to do what they demand the MOD must have money, equipment and men?!
We are currantly fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and they are going to both long drawn out affairs. We, cannot at this time, even consider reducing our man power levels until the fighting is over!
It was the announcement of the witdrawal of the support vessel that give Argentina the signal that Britian was changing its ideas about the falklands.
And considering the need for more and more mobility, with many countries becoming hostile to UK foreign policy (and hence denying air space to the RAF), the UK really needs a viable navy if it wants to continue in its current interventionist role. So either stop the cuts or stop messing around in other people's wars.
Defence cuts are nothing new - we had to live with them at the time I served and nothing has changed in that respect. If this country wants to sit at the big table then it cannot afford to dilute the capability of the Navy anymore, we could not launch a Falklands task force if it were needed now. The pressure on the defence budget with Afghanistan and Iraq will mean that the cuts will fall on the lap of the Navy. Regards
The Treasury also doesn't seem to have any grasp of purely military matters - what's the point of having two new carriers when there won't be enough ships to protect or supply them?
They are talking of keeping the two new carriers that have been ordered, but if the table in the article is correct they are considering having NO minesweepers. What is the point of being able to "project our power" anywhere in the world if we cannot protect our own ports - let alone the ports in areas of conflict that the carriers and LPHs are to operate from? Any terrorist organisation could obtain mines from somewhere like Iran or PRoKorea and drop them from a yacht. In WW1 more ships - or certainly more warships - were lost to mines than to submarines; in WW2 almost as many.
Daft isn't it. 60 years of naval doctrine thrown out the wind. When will the governments learn. And yet they still insist on spending billions on obsolete weapons systems that act more as trophies of power than being of any use in the real world - scrap the nukes, or at least cut them back. Or go ahead and nuke the caves where Osama is supposed to be hiding and get the whole business sorted.
Nothing like having a Navy with impressive capital ships that can project power but their own protection is doubtful. I've seen the UK government doing a number of things to the RN since it's been in power. The RN is THE symbol of Britian. Has been for centuries but now it's seen as too expensive? Puhlease.
I seem to remeber that it was the ROyal navy who provided the ninsweeping capability for that Allies in the first Gulf war because no one else had any!
